


Decking robins and whatnot

by itsthebat



Category: Batgirl (Comics), Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, DCU, DCU (Comics), Nightwing (Comics)
Genre: Also i have a problem with dick i like him with everyone, Babs and dicks first meeting!, F/M, Have this fluffly oneshot, I love them a lot okay, I really love babs, To warm your hearts, and dick, anyway, dickbabs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-05
Updated: 2018-06-05
Packaged: 2019-05-18 15:10:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14855129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/itsthebat/pseuds/itsthebat
Summary: Someone falls from the sky, and Barbara's there to patch him up.





	Decking robins and whatnot

**Author's Note:**

> This is a lot longer than I expected, but! Enjoy!!!

It infuriates Barbara that she can’t see the stars.

            Normally it’s just sad, but this is Gotham and she’s been living here for fifteen years, so she’s used to just looking up and seeing dark clouds and raindrops. However, tonight it makes her want to scream. When she gets to the rooftop of her building and Barbara sees the sky, grey and dark blue and full of clouds of smoke, she just wants to scream. For once in her life, she’d like to see the stars. Something beyond this stupid city.

            But screaming is pointless, and the starts aren’t going to make him change his opinion anyway. Barbara’s not going to become a cop, not now, not ever. Period.

            She knows she’s only fifteen, but hey—dad is always telling her how he _always_ knew he wanted to be a police commissioner. “I used to pretend I was a cop. You grandad was so pissed off every time I fined him because his car wasn’t in the garage.”

            “Can I be a cop too, dad?” she asked him for the first time when she was eleven. But dad shook his head and answered in a too-sweet voice, “No, dear. It’s too dangerous.”

            She grunts, kicking the floor. “Fuck it,” she mumbles under her breath. If it’s too dangerous, then why is _he_ a cop? Why can’t _she_ become one? Barbara is perfectly capable of defending herself, she already knows a couple of martial arts and she has a photographic memory, which is very useful. With a little training, she knows that she can become one of the best cops this stupid city’s ever had.

            But that doesn’t matter one bit, because dad is the commissioner and his word is the law. If he says no, then no. And it makes her furious.

            He’s not the boss of her—he can’t force her to become another thing. Only that… he can. Even if Barbara went to another city, far away from Gotham, dad can always make some calls. He’s the commissioner of _Gotham_ , he works with the _Batman_ and, as much as Barbara hates to admit it right now, he _is_ a good cop. Other cops respect him. And, unfortunately, trust his word.

            Barbara grits her teeth and holds back the tears. She’s not going to cry because of _this_. She’s a strong, capable woman. She _is_ going to because a cop, even if it makes her dad go crazy.

            She sits on the edge of the building, watches the cars pass behind her, like tiny, glowing ants trying to escape the city. When she’s older, she decides, she’s going to escape too. She’s going to get out of this godforsaken city and she’s going to become the best police officer the world has ever seen.

            She hears a car honking, and then another and another and another, and Barbara has to blink twice when she sees a shadow fall face-first to the building in front of her. She holds her breath, squeezes her eyes, trying to look for something—god, how she wishes she’d brought her binoculars. A minute passes, and when she’s starting to think that she imagined it—the clouds of smoke are surely poisonous—she sees something moving. It looks like a person, though a tiny one. He or she is standing on their feet, but they don’t even take one step before collapsing on the floor again.

            Barbara gasps. She waits for the Batman to come, because it surely is one of his villains, but he doesn’t come. She should call the police, tell her dad that someone fell from… somewhere… and is now probably unconscious in the building in front of them.

            But she doesn’t. Instead, she gets to her feet and proceeds to climb down the emergency stairwell. She wants to be a cop, right? She’s going to prove dad that she _can_ be a cop. The stairwell creaks and some steps even break, and Barbara is sure that she is going to fall to her death at any moment, but she doesn’t want dad to hear her use the elevator or going down the normal, safe stairs, and after some agonizing moments, she’s down. 

            Wiping the dust from her pants, she crosses the street and enters the building. It’s a residential building, so nobody asks her where she is going or what she wants when she gets in—she already knew this anyway, because she had a friend that lived here a couple years ago.

            The only bad thing—it doesn’t have an elevator and it has, like, _eight_ floors. And going up is not the same as going down. But Barbara rolls up her sleeves and starts going up the stairs, because she’s going to be a cop. She can do this. And she’s kind of intrigued, though. Is she going to find a villain on the rooftop? What if she does? The person up there fell down as soon as he stood up, so that has to mean that he’s injured, so maybe they are not very dangerous.

            But what if it’s not a villain? Maybe—maybe it’s a superhero. She doesn’t think it was Batman, because the person looked scrawny and small. But the person was far away when Barbara saw him. Ooh, what if it’s Green Lantern? She’s always wanted to see him up close. Or maybe the _Black Canary_. Barbara would _die_ right there if it’s the Black Canary.

            When she gets to the top of the building she thanks whoever is helping her, because the lock of the door is open; she doesn’t know how to pick locks yet, though she is going to learn, someday.

            However, she stands still before the door, biting her lip. She knows how to take care of herself, but what if… what if it’s a dangerous person? What if he has a _gun_? She doesn’t want to die before she can become a cop, and getting shot by someone who fell from the sky would be _super lame_.

            Barbara shakes her head. Thinking isn’t going to make a difference. So she breathes in and opens the door.

            No one’s here. “ _Come on_ ,” she sighs, dragging a hand down her face. All this climbing down crappy stairs and climbing up eight floors for _nothing_? This has to be a joke. This is Gotham, laughing at her. This is—

            Someone grabs her from behind, something pointy against her neck. Barbara yelps, but when her brain catches up her response is almost automatic—she bents her knee and kicks whoever is grabbing her in the crotch. The assaulter screams in pain, and then Barbara bents her arm, elbowing him right in the face. The thing he had against her neck flies from his hand, and Barbara grabs it midair.

            “Ha!” she whoops. Then she looks at the thing the assaulter had in his hand, and she mumbles, “Crap.”

            It’s a _batarang_. When she turns around, she sees Robin sitting on the floor, his back against the door Barbara just came out of, his nose bleeding. “Ohmygod,” she says. “Ohmygod, I just decked Robin.”

            “Ow,” Robin mutters under his breath. He has a hand in his crotch, and Barbara can’t help but bark a laugh. She just decked _Robin_ , Batman’s _sidekick_. She knew she could defend herself, but she didn’t know that she was _this_ good. “Owww,” Robin groans.

            “Sorry?” she says, smiling. She kneels beside him. Robin looks at her, his mop of hair falling in front of his eyes.

            “I thought you were someone else. You’re good.” He grins, but then he winces. When Barbara looks down, she notices that his stomach is bleeding.

            She covers her mouth with her hands. Then she blurts out, “I didn’t do that.”

            Robin laughs, though by his face it must hurt. “No, this wasn’t you.” He shakes the hair from his eyes—his domino mask is broken from one side, a nasty scratch on his forehead bleeding. “Scarecrow, he wasn’t very happy to see us.”

            “ _Scarecrow_?” Barbara sits down with her legs crossed next to Robin. He quirks an eyebrow. Okay, too excited. She clears her throat and says, “Dad’s always talking about how little he likes him.”

            “Your dad?”

            “He’s the commissioner,” she says, rolling her eyes.

            Robin smiles knowingly. He opens his mouth to say something, but he hisses instead, pressing a hand against his bleeding stomach. His costume is covered in blood, and even though Barbara doesn’t know a thing about how much blood a body has, she is pretty sure that Robin has lost an important amount of it.

            She points to the sky. “Is Batman going to come?”

            Robin shrugs. He suddenly looks very pale. “The comms aren’t working,” he says. Then he asks, “Do you have bandages?”

            “I’m not a walking ambulance,” she says. Robin quirks an eyebrow again, and Barbara shakes her head. “No, I don’t.” Something occurs to her, and she grins. “Why don’t you just tell me Batman’s number? I can dial him.”

            “Your jokes are worse than Wally’s,” Robin mumbles.

            “Who?”

            “No one. At home, maybe? Do you have bandages at home?”

            Barbara shrugs. She’s helped dad change his bandages, so she guesses that yeah, she has bandages at home. But she doesn’t know where dad keeps them—which, now that she thinks of it, is dumb. What if she needs them? What if a damaged Robin falls in the building in front of her and she needs to patch him up?

            “Can you fetch them for me?” Robin asks.

            “Ugh,” she groans. Because now she has to climb down eight floors and climb up five. And then repeat. “Okay, be right back.”

            Ten minutes later, she’s stepping quietly into her room. A step of the stairwell broke just before she entered through the window and Barbara almost didn’t make it, but. She’s here!

            She looks around her room, in case dad entered to see if she was okay and noticed that she’d gone away—she was supposed to be an angry teenager, moping in her room after their fight. If dad noticed that she wasn’t here Barbara wouldn’t only not be a cop, but she’d be grounded for the rest of her life. Luckily, everything is just as she’d left it.

            She opens the door carefully not to make any sound. She hears the TV, but when she sneaks a peak, she finds that dad is soundly asleep on the couch, a cherry coke on his hand. Barbara sighs, and heads to his room, where the bandages probably are. First, she checks the night-tables. She only finds old magazines and books in the first one, but when she opens the second—bingo! There’s an unopened plastic bag full of white bandages.

            Picking them up—and trying to ignore the photo of her dad has on the night-table, because she is supposed to be angry at him—Barbara heads to her room, though she stops before the door.

            Robin is probably hungry. Jumping from buildings and standing on a gargoyle to look at the city is probably exhausting. So Barbara tiptoes to the kitchen and picks up a box of cookies and two bottles of water (because climbing stairs is _also_ exhausting), a cherry coke and then she goes to her room again.

            And when she’s there a gush of wind shakes the curtains and makes her shiver, and she realizes—Robin isn’t even wearing _pants_. So Barbara puts on a sweater and then picks a hoodie for Robin. She fetches a small backpack from her wardrobe and puts the cookies, bottles of water, cherry coke and the hoodie inside. Then, she risks her life again trying to climb down those awful stairs.

            When she’s about to open the door and tend to Robin’s wounds, she stops. What if he’s gone? She’s left him alone for, like, twenty minutes. Maybe Batman came to pick him up while Barbara was looking for a hoodie for him. It would be disappointing, because she had so many questions—like, _can you teach me how to be one of you batguys?_ Or _can you describe the batcave?_ Or _who the heck names these things?_ But… what if he’s dead? That would be _really_ disappointing, because then Barbara would’ve failed at being a cop— _the first time_. And what’s most important, no one would believe her when she tells that she decked Robin.

            Before she opens the door, she hears Robin whispering loud enough she can hear him. “C’mon you stupid thing, _work_. Ugh. _Ughhhhhh_. Hey, B? _C’mon_. Bruce? B? I—can’t feel my legs, I need you to pick me up. I thought Jim’s daughter wanted to be a cop—and she’s not even coming back? What a—”

            _That’s my cue_ , Barbara thinks before opening the door. Robin shuts up immediately and looks up at her, pouting. He looks like his mom has just caught him talking shit about his sibling. Huh. Does Robin have a sibling?

            “Hey,” Barbara says, a little offended. She climbs up and down buildings and almost falls a hundred times from the stairwell for his? Now she’s not going to give him the cookies. Or the water. Or the hoodie.

            “Um, hi,” he mumbles. “Again.”

            “I bought bandages,” she says. She picks them up from the backpack and throws them to Robin, who catches them with an _oomph_. “Help yourself.”

            And then, just because she can, she picks up the cookies and starts eating them—she doesn’t offer any to Robin, and he’s now staring at her and it’s kinda creepy. Barbara thinks he’s drooling. She sits beside him and grins. “Weren’t you bleeding?”

            Robin snaps out of it and looks at the bandages. He sighs, puts them aside and tries to get his shirt off—Barbara looks at him, grabbing a cookie, while Robin grunts and huffs and groans and tries and fails to get his shirt off. She bites her lips and swallows her pride because he looks like he’s having a really hard time.

            “Here, let me,” she mutters. Robin lets out a long sigh and drops his arms when Barbara grabs the hems of his shirt and pulls. She feels her hand sticky with blood and winces when she pulls the shirt away—when she looks at Robin, he has a cookie in his mouth. “Hey!” she slaps him on the knee; Robin’s grin gets bigger. “You are a dick.”

            Robin chokes with the cookie. He laughs, and Barbara honestly doesn’t get what’s so funny. She rolls her eyes and picks the bandages. It must be the blood he’s lost.

            “Stop laughing, I can’t wrap these around you if you keep moving,” she says, breaking the package the bandages are in.

            Robin stops laughing. “Sorry, Babs.”

            Barbara stops working on the bandages to look at him. She quirks an eyebrow, and when Robin notices her he bites his lower lip. “Shit, you are Barbara Gordon, right? I mean you said you lived right there and you said your dad was the commissioner and, I mean, you’re a redhead and—”

            “Stop talking.” Robin presses his lips in a thin line, waiting for Barbara to say anything else. “I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear anything, because you just sounded like the biggest stalker like, ever.”

            “Heh.” Even though there’s no moon and no stars, Barbara can see him blushing. But she ignores it, because that would make things much creepier. When she’d done wrapping the bandages, Barbara leans against the door like Robin and picks another cookie. While she’s munching, Robin mumbles, “Thanks.”

            “No problem.”

            Barbara wonders if Batman is going to come to pick him up—surely he’s looking for Robin right now, because if he isn’t, then he’s a crappy partner. And where did Robin fall from anyway? Was he just hanging around, jumping from one skyscraper to another, when suddenly someone hurt him? Maybe a drone hit him. Gotham at nighttime and drones should never go together.

            “What happened to you?” she decides to ask. If she’s going to be a cop, she has to start practicing her skills at interrogation.

            “Someone shot me,” Robin says casually. Like people shoot him all the time. “I was, you know, looking for Batman? We were fighting Scarecrow and we got separated; the comms stopped working, so I was looking for him when suddenly—someone shot me.”

            “Who?”

            Robin shrugs. “Dunno.”

            Barbara snorts. “So, someone from the street shot you just because they felt like it?”

            “I guess.”

            “That’s lame.”

            Robin looks at her, sighs and rests his head on Barbara’s shoulder. “I know.”

            He sounds pretty tired, so Barbara takes that as a chance to ask, “What’s your real name?”

            Robin sighs again but doesn’t say anything for a while. Barbara huffs—so he’s not _that_ tired or hurt to answer that. Okay. She can still try later. She wishes she had her phone right now, though, because her friends aren’t going to believe her when she tells them that she didn’t only help Robin, but that Robin also was this close to her. Not that Barbara likes him or anything—her friends do. And they are going to be oh-so-jealous when Barbara tells them.

            She rests her head against the door and looks at the sky. There are still no stars and a lot of smoke, but her night got so much better.

            “You wanna be a cop?” Robin asks suddenly.

            Barbara grins. “Yep. How do you know?”

            “You dad complains about it sometimes. Like, a week ago? When Killer Croc appeared out of nowhere and put a bomb in the sewers? Batman was talking with your dad and your dad said, ‘I can’t believe Barbara wants to be a cop here.’ Which is kinda weird of him to say, given that he’s a cop here, y’know?”

            She opens her mouth to say something, but she’s so surprised she doesn’t even what to say. Dad talks about this with _Batman_ and _Robin_? What’s wrong with him? This is supposed to be a family matter! “I can’t believe it. I’m going to become a cop no matter what he says.”

            Robin giggles. “I bet you’re going to be better than him.”

            Barbara smiles. “You think so?”

            “I mean,” he smirks, “you _crushed_ me before.”

            “Yeah, I guess I did. But hey, if not, I can always become one of you guys.”

            Robin hums. “You can be… Blackbird.”

            “ _No_.” She thinks about it, and when she comes up with a name, she grins really big. “If I were like you, I would be _Batgirl_.”

            “Batgirl,” Robin says, tasting the name. “I like it.”

            The conversation seems to have ended there, so Barbara picks up the cherry coke and takes a sip. She passes it to Robin, and they take turns until there’s nothing else. By then Barbara’s eyes are starting to close. She wonders if maybe, when Batman comes to pick up Robin, he can give her a lift and take her home. It’s really close. And Batman’s really strong, Barbara’s sure that he can carry two scrawny teenagers.

            But time passes and Batman doesn’t come, and Barbara starts wondering if he’s really going to come. Maybe something happened with Scarecrow. Maybe Barbara should call an ambulance, because Robin was shot and she doesn’t know if he’s asleep or dead.

            She starts wondering about Bruce, too, whoever he is. Robin was asking him for help, so he must be someone that knows his true identity. Ooh, what if he’s Batman? Or maybe a secret butler that helps them. Barbara tries to think of someone named Bruce, but she doesn’t come up with anyone.

            And it’s when she’s falling asleep that a shadow comes over them. When Barbara opens her eyes, she can’t help but squeak. Because it’s… Batman. It’s not like she idolizes him, but… it’s scary, dark Batman, right in front of her. He looks like he’s about to throw a batarang at her.

            “Hi,” she mumbles, trying to smile. Batman looks at Robin, his head still on Barbara’s shoulder. Barbara pushes him aside. Robin grunts. “I didn’t do that. I mean, I kicked him pretty hard on the groin and elbowed him but it was because he surprised me and was about to stab me with a batarang—well, I don’t think he was going to stab me because, like, you guys don’t kill—I think—but he was already like this when I found him. So don’t look at me like that.”

            _Shut up_ , a voice says inside her head. _Shutupshutupshutup_.

            “Robin,” Batman says, though it sounds more like an order. Robin moans, but that’s it. Well, at least he’s alive. Batman picks him up and turns to Barbara again. “Thank you, Barbara.”

            Does every vigilante know who she is?

            Batman turns around, but Barbara gets to her feet and shouts, “Wait!” Batman stops, and Barbara is kind of regretting this. “Can you like, take me home? It’s right there.” She points at the building. “There’s a lot of stairs and I’ve already come and gone like, thrice. And the steps are super dangerous. I don’t want to die after taking care of Robin.”           

            “Hm,” Batman says. So deep. “Climb to my back.”

            And that’s how Batman gave her a piggyback ride home.

 

* * *

 

“Barbara!” Dad shouts from somewhere. “Do you know where the bandages are?”

            _Probably on the rooftop of some building_ , she thinks, taking another spoonful of cereals. “No!” she says instead.

            That and the fact that she can’t find her green hoodie are the only things that prove that last night she really decked Robin. This morning she thought that she’d imagined everything, that it was a super weird, super specific dream she’d had. But nope. She kicked Robin in the groin. Robin stole her green hoodie. Batman gave her a piggyback ride.

            What a wild night.

            Dad enters the kitchen with his hair messed up, probably from sleeping on the couch. Barbara keeps eating cereals and milk—she’s supposed to be angry at him. He sighs. “What has he done again?” he says, turning on the volume of the TV.

            “—the only thing we know is that poor little Dickie was mugged last night,” they are saying. “Someone supposedly shot him on the stomach”—Barbara’s head snaps up—“but he’s fine. Bruce wasn’t hurt badly; as far as we know, he mugger punched him and proceeded to hurt the kid. Which is totally weird, given that Bruce is the rich one. And—oh, look. Right now, billionaire playboy Bruce Wayne is leaving the hospital with his ward, Richard ‘Dick’ Grayson—”

            Barbara chokes, spitting cereal and milk everywhere.

            “ _No fucking way!_ ”

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you liked it!!! Leave me a comment telling me what you thought about it, if you want! <3


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